About monitoring the progress of a project [AX 2012]

During the course of a project, you can monitor various aspects of the project’s progress. For example, you can view the hour utilization of the project team members, or you can compare actual cash flow with the cash flow estimate that was made before the project started.

The following sections introduce the types of methods that you can use to monitor the progress of a project.

Note

This topic includes information about features that were added or changed for cumulative update 7 or later for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2. This information also applies to AX 2012 R3.

Create a quick view of a project or projects by creating a project statement. You can create a statement that reflects activity for a single project, for multiple projects that are associated with a single project contract, or for one or more projects that an individual worker has contributed to.

Project statements that are associated with a worker or project contract can be limited to show activity from only the project types that you want. You can also choose the transaction types for which you want to track progress. You can specify a starting date or date range to create a project statement that contains only transactions from a certain time period. By limiting the time period for the project statement, you can also compare the difference between actual transactions and forecasted transactions.

You can view general information about the profit and loss structure of the projects and information about accrued revenue and WIP account balances. You can also view consumption details, invoicing totals to date, and details about the rates for hours that have been posted to revenue and cost accounts.

Use invoice control to calculate and view posted transaction amounts. You can identify which transactions have been invoiced, which transactions remain to be invoiced, and which of those that remain to be invoiced will cause the original quotation amount to be exceeded. For more information, see Invoice control (form).

View the hour utilization rate for the project team members who are assigned to a project. You can calculate the hour utilization based on a team member’s billable or efficiency rate on either budgeted hours or the actual hours spent working on a project. For more information, see Utilization hours (form).

Compare the calculated cash flow for a project with the actual cash flow. You can view all cash flow details for a project, or focus only on certain aspects of the project. For example, you can include specific transaction types, specific dates on which payments for the project were made, and payments that you expect to receive. For more information, see Cash flow (form).

Calculate and view the cost of one or more projects. You can view all cost details for a project, or focus only on certain aspects of the project. For example, you can view remaining costs on the project and the difference between the actual costs and the budgeted costs of individual cost lines. For more information, see Cost control (form).

When you select a project category for a task and the sales price and cost per hour are specified for the project category, the price and cost amounts are automatically added to the work breakdown structure (WBS) for the task. In the cost tracking view of a WBS, you can view a comparison between planned, estimated, and actual revenue and costs for a task.

In the work breakdown structure (WBS) form, you can enter the estimated number of hours that are required to complete a task. When you enter estimated hours for tasks, the values are automatically added to fields in the effort tracking view of the WBS. You can compare planned, estimated, and actual hours posted for a task.